GI Joe: Retaliation

When I was three years old, I lost Beachhead.  He wore a military sweater complete with the shoulder patch for gun recoil.  He also wore a badass balaclava, and he was an Army Ranger.  Did I mention he was 3 1/2 inches tall?  In case you haven't guessed, Beachhead was an action figure.  He was my favorite GI Joe.  And I lost him.

Since that sad day in 1986, my brother has always mailed me the new editions of Beachhead.  Two Christmases ago, he even game me a special edition, 12-inch collectible Beachhead.  It wasn't cheap.  He has this crossbow with individual arrows, and then there are these smoke bombs...Sorry.

I suppose this has been my brother's attempt to help my recapture my childhood.  I suppose I started to lose some of my bright-eyed innocence when Beachhead left my toy bag.  Life was simple back then.  Bad guys wore cobra symbols on their shoulders and good guys had blond flattop haircuts.  To me, GI Joe means a time when I didn't need meds to calm my nerves, and girls were a far-off problem.  I swear I could have saved a lot of time if a few of my ex-girlfriends would have dressed less like hipsters and more like Storm Shadow or Cobra Commander.

So, going to the theatre for GI Joe Retaliation, I walked in with the heavy weight of nostalgia on my shoulders.  The movie did not disappoint.  I put it alongside other toy adaptations like Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  None of these films are particularly good ,but they all bring to life the toys that filled the playrooms of my childhood.  Plus, it is always nice to see Dolph Lundgren speaking monosyllabically and flirting with a pre-plastic surgery Courtney Cox.  Watching GI Joe, I was thrilled to see the HISS Tanks, the Fangboat, and Roadblock's Tank.  Unlike so many stock Hollywood filmmakers, the production team actually built full-size working models of these vehicles. The vehicles I used to push across our shag carpet are now being driven across the screen of multiplexes everywhere.

When these toys first graced store shelves, the cartoons were meant only to sell a product.  The stories did not matter much and they served only to show the good guys battling the bad guys.  Cobra builds the MASS device.  I can destroy the world.  The GI Joes stop them.  Zartan starts making trouble in the swamp.  The GI Joes stop them.  Notice a pattern here?  It didn't matter; I still marched the aisles of Toys R Us, searching for Night Viper and Stalker with his collectible kayak.  Sweet.  If I never judged the GI Joe cartoon for peddling the toys, is it fair to hold the film to a higher standard?  Isn't it enough that I can see the plastic heroes of my youth clashing in 3D on the big screen?

I think so.  The film has its weaknesses for sure.  The characterization is clunky.  Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palick) became a soldier only to prove to her father that women can serve well in the military.  Of course she is proven right.  I am more impressed by Ms. Palicki here.  Since her days on Supernatural and Friday Night Lights, I have never understood her allure.  I guess all it takes is a revealing red dress to, uh, reveal her best assets.  Add in some impossibly short shorts and what appear to be 700 minute abs, and I am sold.  

While Palicki proved her worth to me, the RZA cannot claim the same.  What is he doing her?  What is he doing anywhere?  He makes a few appearances as a blind ninja master.  True, the guy has had a very nice year.  First, he directs his first film, the god-awful The Man With the Iron Fists.  Now, here he is, looking absolutely ridiculous.  I know that he is the self-proclaimed expert on Kung Fu films, but that doesn't grant him the right to make or star in these films.  He makes Gerard Butler look like Laurence Olivier.  Seriously.

Director John Chu's gifts do not lie in characterization or directing actors.  He really shines in the action scenes.  As the GI Joes and Cobra agents punch, shoot, and slice each other, you can see Chu's background in dance movies come through.  Chu cut his teeth on such dance fare as Step Up 3D and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.  The set pieces are choreographed like beautifully gritty dances, and they pack quite a punch.  A gun/hand-to-hand battle between Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) and Firefly (Ray Stevenson) displays the grace and hard-hitting edge of a John Woo shootout.  He directs a nifty scene featuring ninjas running across rock faces and sliding down zip lines with great aplomb.  The stuntmen and women fly and jump from rope to rope almost as if they are moving to music.  It's all thrilling, if just a little insane.

Since I spent last week skewering Olympus Has Fallen, I may appear to be a hypocrite.  Isn't GI Joe just as gung-ho and war-mongering as Butler's slice of Fox News action?  The film is absolved of many of its militaristic sins because it exists in a fantasy world.  Just as I miss those days of simplicity with my GI Joes, perhaps we all miss a time when the line between good guy and bad guy was clearly demarcated.  That time probably never existed, but it is refreshing to see a film where the North Koreans, Middle Eastern countries, and the US can all consider Cobra a mutual enemy.  Religion and history are taken out of the equation, and we see that Cobra is just pure evil and guys with impossibly huge biceps are there to stop them.  It may be stupid, but it takes me back to those great halls of my childhood imagination.  I didn't feel guilty for enjoying myself, and you shouldn't either.

Olympus Has Fallen

Ah, Gerard Butler.  Where did you come from and what did we do to deserve you?  You're like some old, boring tenured professor.  You're taking up your position and depriving us of a younger, more talented, action star. You need to have a discussion with your dialogue coach.  Your American accent is laughable.  Hey, did Arnold ever try to cover up his accent? No. Did Sean Connery win an Oscar for playing an Irish cop with a Scottish accent? Yep.  Just own it man!  Also, don't do musicals.  Your rendition of Music of the Night made my loins hurt.

Now here comes Olympus as Fallen.  Wow.  I feel like I just got out of a time machine from 1985.  Early in the film, star Gerard Butler sits at a DC cafe.  Behind him there is a picture of Ronald Reagan at his desk.  Just so we don't miss it, director Antoine Fuqua cuts to a close-up of the framed picture.  The opening also features Butler boxing with President Aaron Eckhart, a scene right out of Broken Arrow and Rocky IV.  Fuqua lets his audience know that this is a throwback to the Reagan-era action film, when film gods like Stallone and Schwarzenegger filled the screen with commie-busting machismo.

I'm sure Sean Hannity will choose this as one of his films of the year.  The film opens with the American flag waving in the air, a beacon of stolid hope.  President Eckhart tells the nation that the terrorist enemies came to "trample our freedom" and "destroy our way of life."  Fuqua's characterization of the villains is offensive and stupid.  They are North Korean, but they wear Middle Eastern kafyas and suicide bomb the front of the White House.  Hey, they're all the same, right?  Ugh.

In a year where films like Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, and Lincoln showed the complexity of America and its place in the world, Fuqua should be ashamed to put his film on the same silver screen.  Never mind the Walker Texas Ranger TV-style filmmaking.  Forget about the computer effects that look like they were drawn by my nephew Rex.  Hey, the kid can draw, but he may need to wait a few years before he goes to Hollywood.  Beyond the filmmaking, this movie is just wrong and regressive.

Olympus Has Fallen has no respect for DC and its landmarks.  The terrorists knock down the Washington Monument.  Gerard Butler loads his cache of weapons on the desk of the Oval Office.  There is a shootout in the Lincoln bedroom and Butler even crushes a bad guy's skull with a bust of President Lincoln.  I'm not sure that's the message Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis were trying to send with their Oscar-nominated film. Hey, maybe I misinterpreted all the discussions of justice and benevolence.

There are a few elements that I enjoyed, just so you don't think I'm completely bitter.  There is this chunky White House aide who has about four lines in the whole film.  His only job is to look jowly and really shocked when something explodes.  It's a powerhouse performance of character acting.  Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman also elevate the material a bit.  I swear the two of them could sell ex-lax to a diarrhea ward.  Freeman deserves an Oscar for delivering the line "He just opened up the gates of hell" without laughing.  I hope he was paid a hefty fee for the film and that he got himself something nice. Maybe a fur sink or gasoline-powered turtle neck?

The rest of the film is just a montage of meaty face close-ups and exploding heads. Does Butler have to go for the headshot every time?  He makes Rick from The Walking Dead look like a terrible marksman.  Still, he would make President Reagan proud.  Maybe he and Butler could have ridden horses together.  Well, they can have each other.  Maybe I'll go see if Rex has any new pictures for me.

Stoker

I think I've been too harsh on Nicole Kidman.  In the end, I suppose I'm like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams and I haven't forgiven her for getting old.  My brother and I used to watch Dead Calm and Days of Thunder and say some very, very inappropriate things. Like, this one time, my brother said...uh, never mind.  It was really funny though.  In her recent films, though, I find myself thinking of F. Murray Abraham in Star Trek: Insurrection or Sam's mom in Brazil.  Kidman too looks like she has had her skin pulled back by some kind of hack doctor.  Still, her tight face and acting style work well in Stoker, Park Chan Wook's English language debut.

Like Ms. Kidman's acting, Park's directing is tight.  The director has always impressed with his handling of camera and composition.  Oldboy and the rest of his Vengeance trilogy are nearly perfect films.  Stoker may not be perfect, but Park's control of the medium has not weakened in the least.

Stoker is pretty much a film student's wet dream. Any cinephile's mouth should water at all the Hitchcock references.  Stuffed birds and swinging bulbs abound, a la Psycho.  Stoker also counts Uncle Charlie as one of its main characters, a clear homage to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.  Visually, Park's film also calls to mind the Technicolor plasticity of Vertigo and Rear Window.  It's really beautiful stuff.

Park's visual motifs are also orgasmic. Is that too extreme?  Hey, I caught myself moaning on numerous occasions when Park would yet again surprise me with his talent. You may wish to bring an extra pair of boxers, or thong, or granny panties, whatever you wear.  Anyway, speaking of clothes...throughout the entire film, the director draws attention to shoes, belts, and other clothing.  India (Mia Wasikowska) receives a new pair of shoes every year on her birthday.  In one particularly beautiful scene, she lies in her bed surrounded by her 18 pairs of shoes.  This wonderful image depicts how boxed up and tied to history India feels.  In the opening sequence India itemizes her attire. Her belt belonged to her father, her skirt to her mother, and her shirt to her uncle.  All these images depict how much India is tethered to her ancestry. Her fate is set.

Another motif concerns the opening of boxes and the digging up of earth.  Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) digs up the garden to place stepping stones.  India unzips her Uncle's overnight bag, attempting to uncover the truth of his history.  She unlocks the bottom drawer of her father's desk and finds several boxes, all containing pictures from her father's childhood.  All these images heighten the sense of mystery in the film.  We want to know what horrors lie in this family's past, what evil currents run under their home.

It is too bad, then, that the solution to the mystery isn't all that satisfying.  Ultimately, Stoker is one more example of an amazing director working with a sub-par script.  Formally, the film is impressive and accomplished.  It is the content that's shallow.  The script is written by Wentworth Miller, that guy from Prison Break.  I'm sorry, Fox TV stars might not be the best choice to pair with a genius director.  Whatever happened to the days of Paul Schrader writing for Martin Scorsese?  It's like putting crappy 87 gas in your Aston Martin.

Still, Park delivers an impressive first film here in the US.  Next to Je-Woon Kim's The Last Stand, this is a solid film.  I am excited for this recent influx of Korean directors to Hollywood, and the director makes me look forward to more stimulating fare.  This is the kind of film you could put on silent at a cocktail party.  You may weird people out and you probably won't get lucky, but it sure is one pretty piece of art.

Oz, The Great and Powerful

Leather pants.  Leather pants are great.  I can't wear them myself, not without a shoe horn and about half a bottle of extra strength Gold Bond. Still, leather pants have done wonders for many others.  They gave Eddie Murphy a unique, sexy look for his Raw tour back in the 80s.  They gave stoned Venice Beach hotties one more reason to throw themselves at a young Jim Morrison as he crooned at the Whiskey A-Go-Go.  And, most recently, they kept yours truly from leaving the theatre as the rest of the audience oooed and ahhed at the crappy visuals and clunky storytelling of Oz, The Great and Powerful.  Thank you, Mila Kunis, and whatever cow gave their its hide for your wonderfully form-fitting pantaloons.

Oz, The Great and Powerful is a messy film.  It's the kind of movie where one can picture the money men and special interest groups sitting at a round table and planning it out.  "Hey, prequels are really in right now."  "Yeah, and people like that musical, Wicked."  "And Alice and Wonderland made a buttload of cash, even though it was a technicolor pile of shit."  "Hey, what about Wizard of Oz? People love that movie!"  These conversations ran through my head as the story went awry and the comedy fell flat.  Oz is the most recent addition to a genre of film I call “Bar-Code cinema.”  It feels more like product than artistic endeavor.  A similar conversation could have been had in regard to the new Mega-Stuff Oreos.  "Hey, people like Oreos." "Yeah, and they're really fat." "Let's put more cream in the middle!"  Hey, I'm not going to lie.  I buy about one package a week.  They are delicious.  Only 90 calories per cookie.

It's a shame that this product, and all the blame for its creation, will be laid in the lap of Sam Raimi.  From all accounts, Raimi is an enormous fan of the original film as well as the Baum series.  Raimi can be an amazing director, when he is in his element.  The Evil Dead series includes some of the most important horror films of the 80s and 90s and still influences the genre today.  Those films were are beautiful examples of artistic freedom.  The goo flies, the heads roll, the chainsaw.. . .  Well it does really awesome stuff.

In Oz, Raimi only rarely struts his stuff.  In one memorable sequence, Oz (played by the medicated James Franco) is whisked away to the magical land by a large tornado.  His hot air balloon is bombarded by debris and, in a nicely choreographed vignette,  he dodges some very sharp, very scary pieces of shrapnel.  That's the Raimi we all know and love. In another sequence, we see our heroes through the eyes of some very nasty monsters.  Raimi employs some wonderful fisheye lenses and filters to funny and frightening effect.  These scenes and the occasional whip pan, extreme zoom, and canted angle are his only visible auteurist touches.

Oz's star James Franco also feels very out of place.  Franco does best when he's cracking jokes and winking at the camera.  His performance in Pineapple Express is one of the greatest comedic performances in recent years.  He doesn't fare as well in dramatic roles. Sure, he was nice in Milk, but I always feel like he's getting ready to crack up and ruin the take.  He feels like a higher-paid Jimmy Fallon.  There are a few instances where I even noticed him breaking character and trying not to giggle.  This is charming in some instances, but it often pushed me out of the story.  I haven't seen an actor so out of place since Harvey Keitel donned a red fro wig and exclaimed with New York accent, "You're worse than them. You're a Jew killing Jews."  Man.

Raimi and Franco are not aided by the script, which feels much too modern for Oz.    The humor and timing feel very much 2013, when this is supposed to take place in 1905, before the 1939 Wizard of Oz.  This is a problem I have with many prequels.  The humor and action don't fit with the tone of the original films. The costumes and sets may look the same, but the vibe is completely off.  Before he travels to Oz, our protagonist splits his time between performing magic tricks and skeezing on women. It is a running joke that he's pretty much a sexual predator.  This type of humor may fit in a Jonah Hill film, but it feels oddly out of place here.  Add a sarcastic monkey voiced by Zach Braff and, ugh.

Finally, the film just feels cheap.  I saw it in IMAX 3D, which can sometimes add great dimension and depth to a film.  Here, the high definition image just served to highlight the lack of definition in the costumes and sets.  The costume department looks like they won a shopping spree at Jo Ann Fabrics and went to town with the felt and sequins.  My Mom made me a better Batman costume back in 1989, using the same materials.

The visual effects also feel uninspired.  They don't look bad, but they don't really inspire wonder.   One of the highlights of the film is when we see Oz use his prestidigitation and illusionist tricks to convince everyone that he truly is a great and powerful wizard. We see the man behind the curtain, using every one of the items in his bag of tricks.  It would seem appropriate, then, if Raimi dipped his hand into his old bag of tricks and used some old fashioned movie magic.  Make-up, trick photography, double exposure.  Instead Oz's illusionist show is just one more computer-generated image and, thus, inspires not much more wonder that the rest of this film.  I'm sorry, Sam, but please go back to horror and leave this kind of fare to Tim Burton, who's too far gone to save.